Sacre Bleu

Remember when Zinedine Zidane steered France to their first World Cup title in 1998? Kylian Mbappe doesn't. The absurdly gifted young forward wasn't even born when the French team lifted the trophy for the first time. But it was Mbappe's pace, energy and fearlessness that helped put France back at the summit of world football in 2018, erasing years of failure, rancour and shame.

Kylian Mbappe, aged just nineteen, was undoubtedly the most exciting talent to emerge from the 2018 football World Cup. Significantly, Mbappe was born in the year of his country's first World Cup triumph.

From France's first World Cup victory in 1998 to their second in 2018, Les Bleus have experienced a journey that has been anything but easy. Two decades of extreme turbulence for both the national team and the country, however, has seen the birth, growth and emergence of football wunderkind Kylian Mbappe. This young, dynamic player has lifted the country's spirits; he is a precocious talent who has let his ability demonstrate a grace and certainty beyond his years, and a genius that is as lethal as it is quiet.

Sports journalist and broadcaster Matthew Spiro examines the reasons behind French football's glorious highs and its impossibly depressing lows. With the uniquely compelling Mbappe as the lens through which he examines the past twenty years of French football, Sacre Bleu poses compelling questions: does this current exciting generation represent the start of an era of domination? Or will 2018—much like 1998—prove to be nothing more than a false dawn?